How did the masters of the Italian Renaissance study
Verrocchio, Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo. The greatest geniuses. What bright individuals and how much they differ from each other! What unites the unsurpassed masters of the time, which is…

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Luca della Robbia - devotional service to art
The whole long life of Luke della Robbia was dedicated to serving the arts. The sculptor was born in Florence in 1399 or 1400. He made many works that rightfully…

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Anton Refrigier - born in Moscow
Refrege was born in Moscow in the year of the first Russian revolution. This fact would seem irrelevant to the biography of an American artist: after all, his father took…

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Artists of besieged Leningrad
In the city on the Neva, in the House of Artists, in front of the entrance to the exhibition halls hangs a large marble plaque. On it are carved the…

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Artists of besieged Leningrad
In the city on the Neva, in the House of Artists, in front of the entrance to the exhibition halls hangs a large marble plaque. On it are carved the…

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bookbinder decorators

Eugene Delacroix – Goethe’s Faust lithographs

In the 1820s, the artist Eugene Delacroix was in the prime of his creative power. He is 30 years old, he is a recognized master, who created the paintings that put him among the best artists of France: “Dante and Virgil”, “The Massacre at Chios”, “The Execution of Marino Faliero”, “The Death of Sardanapala”.

In them, Delacroix most fully reflected the ideas of progressive romanticism that prevailed at that time in French painting, to the transmission of historical truth expressed by a vivid, emotional language, which compels the emperor to sympathize with the strong, integral and passionate characters. Continue reading

Camille Corot: “I write with my heart”

The large, half a century long, creative life of the French artist Camille Corot (1796–1875) was, as it were, subject to the change of seasons. In the winter months he worked in the Paris workshop, often visiting the opera and the conservatory. But the happiness of communicating with wildlife meant for the master incomparably more than visiting museums and concert halls. Every year with the onset of spring, he went on a journey through various regions of France to write sketches. Many of them have become pearls of plein-air painting. Continue reading

Diego Rivera – the great Mexican painter

When the Great October Socialist Revolution took place in Russia, a revolutionary struggle was going on in Mexico for seven years. Armed peasants opposed the dictatorship of the rich and the priests, the landowners who seized fertile land, against the dominance of foreign capitalists. The war was unusually stubborn and cruel. The reactionary militia malice, American troops twice invaded Mexico. The bourgeoisie traitorously turned its weapons against the peasant detachments led by the popular leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The rebels showed heroism and won great victories.

In February 1917, a constitution was adopted. Continue reading

"Denial of confession" by Ilya Repin
The man was brought to execution. After several months of imprisonment, he was pale. Around the roaring crowd. - Villain, crazy! In the king himself shot! - God saved his…

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"The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis" by Rembrandt
A prominent place in Rembrandt’s painting is taken by the painting “The Claudius Civilis Conspiracy”, created in 1661. This creation was destined to play a very special role in all…

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Two portraits of the actress Strepetova
There are destinies that strike the imagination with unusualness and inner completeness — such is the life of Pelageya Antipevna Strepetova (1850–1903), difficult and bright, full of dramatic turns. At…

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